notebook

more on listening (or not!) [semi-rambly?]

first of all im gonna slightly-more-immortalize this from the neocities feedchurn, to muse a bit more on after:

me:

rly appreciate ur mentions of i suppose the stripping away of listening to music, speaks to me on some level but moreso from me being so so overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the world; maybe u saw my notebook blurb touching upon it a bit but kinda wanna write about my angles on that a lil more... maybe i ought to have a little pause with it too !! cleanse the palate.

vashti (line breaks my own):

I appreciate you mentioning me in your diary! I am in a similar mindspace (headspace + mindset?) as you. I’ve really been trying to find quiet & have been really selective with what I watch / listen to.

I’ve also rejected the concept of background noise: If I put something on, then I am going to pay attention to it. I realized a while ago, beyond my “stripping away of listening to music,” that I’ve been seeking distraction, or just anti-boredom, but it’s good to be bored. Once you get out & start looking at it from the outside, you wonder how you were able to live like that, with constant noise.

In I guess a straightforward or simple way, my mood has been better & while I have trouble with being overstimulated, it hasn’t been as bad as it used to. I think my tolerance of external noises, as in noise that I have not chosen like music, has built itself up, which is strange, because the whole world seems like a much fuller, louder place. In regards to music specifically, it’s given me a deeper appreciation for it. I’ve been cutting away & getting rid of a lot of things in my life these past few months, but music has by far been the hardest.

Two things inspired me to do it, well, prompted me to do it rather, (it’s very in line with how I’ve been living lately):

1. One day I was playing my Switch & had a stream on in the background & realized that I had no idea what was being said in the stream, as in I completely cut it out. I wondered why I put it on in the first place.
2. Last year I watched Portrait de la jeune fille en feu & while I don’t like the movie at all, there’s this one scene that I’d found really impactful, two actually:
   In one of the scenes, a young woman says she misses the nunnery because at least at the nunnery there was music. The idea that you would have to go seek out music back in the day was completely foreign to me, in that I’d never considered it because music is just that ubiquitous.
   In the other scene, I felt emotionally impacted & could not figure out why, because I did not enjoy the story or its portrayal of romance; it was because it was the only instance of music in an otherwise music-less film. It made me consider how maybe my constant exposure to music was dulling its impact. I think this is part of why we just love to find new songs, because it hasn’t been trampled under our dancing feet into the ground yet.

Beyond that, I suppose I have philosophical or spiritual motivations, but even if you don’t have those, I would really recommend not listening to any music. Even if it’s just for a week. Don’t wear any headphones as you go about your day. No TV or Youtube in the background of your life. No music. & just see how full the world is.

yea i do have to have a lil bit of radio/music going on at work cos itd be awkward without! but fortunately have full aux command there and some time back a customer (older man) told me to turn it down so he could hear while calling some1, which i did ofc, and it made me think to myself "ooh....its better this way actually" so ive just simply been puttin it on quieter... fr i gotta notebook bout all this more deeply

on music as distraction / weapon against boredom

true! but at the same time sometimes music is a shield for me against sounds that trigger my misophonia to at least some extent (though mostly at home when parents are there, or otherwise in places with people)... or sometimes the jumpstarter to the bugged car that my brain is, but it's a really thin line sometimes between getting it rolling re doing stuff and getting distracted by the music. even if i were not to listen to anything at my own will, i appreciate the energy of earbuds in my pocket (with either my phone or my mp3 player. preferably the latter really, the phone's presence can be overwhelming). definitely as coping mechanism of some sorts.

i used to listen to music on walks to + from work (and uni before that too), but i somehow seamlessly (mostly) stopped doing that from some point on, sometime last year, wanting to focus on the sounds on the surroundings more... definitely less of overstimulation, between this and having the radio on more quietly at work.
(now if i were brave enough to take... i'm not sure whether a scalpel or a butcher's knife, or both, to some of my online-existence habits, it would be even more of thwarted overstimulation + sources of mental stuckness! but that's a whole other topic)

on new music vs familiar music, for me

the new music finding part made me think of this bit from i think it was valede kataloog / inglise aed by tõnu õnnepalu, page 356 originally and im not sure the book's been translated to english, so have to make do with my own (+ original for comparison):

i think i have something similar going on with music! though not so much anxiety as just overwhelm, as there's so so much music out there. plus how else do i get so so much mileage out of things familiar to me sometimes. need my homesteads, in some situations. plus the whole well-documented case i have with cartoon smile by oli xl :,) the comfort of that song means the world to me genuinely, nothing else hits the same. nothing else. though also at this point even if i were to go longer stretches between listening to that song its energy is still embedded really deep within me for the time being, so.

(funnily enough i've been listening to my recording from last weekend of oli xl's remix of tammy lucas' is it good to you acapella on loop while working on this whole writing. it does say something about me for that occasion to have been my 10th time catching oli dj, what with him having his little go-to tunes across sets, this remix being one of them though mostly in the '22 sets... i digress!)

on the impact of music in its ubiquity, and in the age of surveillance

true about the constant exposure dulling its impact possibly! and there's definitely some thinking to also be done about spotify's playlist-shilling and whatnot that i feel defiance against, maybe because of feeling general defiance against spotify on several levels, but others have written better about its various levels of bullshit than i would.

also there's some opposition going on within me between the "uses last.fm for accurate listening stats to look back on" part and the "quite defiant against surveillance" part, with some chiming-in from the "i want to get more mileage from my old mp3 player" part (only applicable in summertime, regular AAA batteries too weak in the cold), that i haven't really fully explored yet!

though on the one hand it's nice to have the last.fm usage streamline ways of sharing music with others sometimes, especially on discord via the bots, and connection with others is one of the aspects of music i deeply appreciate (via this, and otherwise bonding with fellow fans of stuff i enjoy, and via going to events), and also it's a helpful tool in refinding things i used to find nice and listen actively but have forgotten about! but on the other hand i think it's causing some brainrot for me in its current form...

i think it's mainly the fact my last.fm is just out there for others to see. i've entertained the thought of figuring out some way to track my listening more locally, but the old-mp3-player-appreciator part of me is like "psssst do you even NEED to track that shit accurately? who cares? it's all gonna be in dust (or become e-waste) one day, don't stress yourself like that. can just have your last.fm be partially accurate, and/or just write about your listening. who cares." and honestly i think they have a point. embrace the imperfections!
and this also feeds a bit into the topics in 'unquantified' by nomasters which i touched upon in my feb 7 '24 entry.

okay i think i've run out of brain juice to write any more about this. think this suffices.

unrelated list of things:

• yesterday upon coming back home from work + post-work grocery store trip, i lingered a bit to pet a really friendly orange tabby cat, and then proceeded to get caught by the rain for the rest of the way home, pretty intensely at points
• the scratches on my knees and palm from the kick scooter fall have all healed enough by now not to need constant bandaging anymore which is nice
• today a day off, but it's forecasting rain for some of today (and has actually rained too) and also my limbs are a bit sore when moving, so no riding today i think
• felt really stuck and really sad a couple evenings ago... really do have to shift some stuff about how i spend my energy.
• eleventy sometimes leaves stray empty paragraphs in my janky hybrid markdown-html files and it slightly annoys me! i'm mildly familiar with python so i've been eyeing at makesite... but for now even that may be too much work for me, but might be charming to experiment with it someday, or maybe even experiment with it for something else and not this. or another option would be to straight-up have the files for this site as html for a bit more control haha
• sometimes when chilling somewhere indoors i have the thought of "everything in this space has been made and/or handled by someone" and it kind of overwhelms me

some of vashti's diary's midmay entries speaking with me a little today in particular, after a little catch-up read with the entries.

for one the stopping listening to music and all that, think i've ebbed rather close to that but i don't quite want to entirely quit doing it for the time being ! just be much much more mindful with it. but i've been in a really reductive mood w some of my online existence, on the flipside... tearing down some of my insta, tearing down some of my tumblr (publicly anyway, cos i have an archive). wanting to really go in on going thru my files, clean the unnecessary gunk out.

i have an are.na block from user rosemary, this block, on/as my desktop wallpaper:

i want my computer to be like a cutting board—

i use it to chop things up so they can move on to the next step of cooking. waste to the compost, food to a vessel. sometimes it has beet stains, but i wash it off, they come out, and i prop it up to dry and start from a clean slate.

my files, if they’re carrots or chard, can’t stay on the cutting board forever (and it gets crowded fast). i‘ll saute or roast, or maybe ferment, and eat them, cuz they won’t do me much good otherwise. maybe i’ll have leftovers for a few days, maybe i’ll get some more next week, or maybe their season will pass. ideally, i or others would consume my digital ingredients while they’re still fresh, and then they would be gone. if i really need a record, i can put it on paper.

i'm trying to let it inform how i use my computer more, or at least parts thereof.

and, "Rather than something above, I think [the soul]’s something below, something subterranean, something that you venture into, something dark & something within." (from vashti's may 15 soul/spirit conclusions) -- soul ~ soil :-)

also somehow rly enamored w train window spinstar phrase from the selkies exchange screenshot from may 12 in the diary

i met this friendly cat with the sweetest tiniest little meows on my way home from work today... and a more timid orange cat, the two briefly sniffed at each other's faces and then parted ways again. something about this spun me out into some existential sadness, probably over the transience of everything really... all the same i did still manage to clean the cat litter box at home, and cook myself some pasta, despite the sadness.

need to take better care of myself in some aspects...

tentative statement on being able to catch oli xl at kwia again this saturday, if his insta story has no typos re it being on saturday or anything :-] with a lil opener person (meana, @meana_mina on insta) this time that im entirely unfamiliar with but still looking forward to. i have the sat off cos of being at an event in stockholm on fri (year0001 rift, with mechatok+torus etc), and sundays i have off by default with this job, soooo... (will make sure to take sufficient enough cash-euros w me this time lol, the damn place only takes cash on entry much as i know)

it feels really really ridiculous to ball like this while the world is proverbially and partly maybe literally up in flames. but the balling is out of some maybe-selfish i live too close to russia and what if in future [...], and life's too short and fragile, and the universe is an absurd fuckign open sandbox. long as i overall leave the world a kinder place than it was before me...

...if im feisty enough i may be like "feel free to sneak in cartoon smile to the set this time if u want to" this time... it's a bit of a dream, for me, genuinely, to hear it in that context in particular. was too sleepy last (first) time i caught oli in that venue, only after he'd powered down the deck was i like "if i'd been feisty enough i would've requested cartoon smile" or smth, he replied "maybe next time". maybe next time...

list of things, in no particular order

• i bought a manual kick scooter the other day, from the local reuse centre, for just 25€ which isnt bad (the particular kick scooter has apparently gone for 100+ or so new/retail lol; it seems decent, seems no flaws function-wise, merely looks worn out but i don't mind that. and it's foldable and rather light!). nice enough intermediate step toward learning to ride a bike one day, can learn to balance more confidently on these things too. have had one trial run yet, on some stretch of sidewalk at the edge of town, but it was really nice already. been chilly but looking forward to more of befriending it
• my mom just said theyre gonna go and have bbq at the gardenplot after church tomorrow, might be nice
• work tired me out today somehow, succumbed to the beanbag for a nap for a while after... but also i got like 5 something hours of sleep last night and a bare 3 the night prior, so... yeah
• iglooghost's new album is nice, have given a few whirls to it. my brain cartwheels at the oli xl feature on flux cocoon :-D but yeah in general it goes hard
• mmmm.. 2 days off up next, will see what to do with them. think i'll continue to (i guess slowly) go thru my things, spring clean. i have this list written down of specific things to do that're spring-cleaning-coded really. both for physical realm and digital realm. but also hopefully get around to another lil trial run with the kick scooter hehe
• i missed last night's aurora, think the peak mightve been while i was asleep anyway, cos when i was looking at the lil crescent moon around midnight i didn't notice any. i heard the stuff still goin on for a bit more (rip to some systems hope those're being handled okay) so there might be more tonight, but i can't lie i'm quite sleepy still, and the sky still gonna be light for some time more even while the sun has set (i love twilight being long in here tho)

some list of things, in no particular order

• continuing a bit to clean up / incinerate a lot of my older tumblr reblogs (after having archived the whole thing, a little while back). i dont know. feels like an unwieldy weight. it's not the first time ive incinerated older reblogs
• dreamt of oli xl's site again, either last night or the night before. 5th time ever now.
• this past sunday i went on a really really long walk (and to just hang out outside) in the pleasant weather, it was warm and sunny. headed out at around 12pm, got back home after 7.5 hours. i left my phone home, merely took my old mp3 player and a couple of spare batteries for it with me (and also my card), it felt nice. some things from the walk
  • larger round iridescent-coated grave lantern next to a tree at the side of a small road leading into a forested area, with mediumsize rocks around it in a halfcircle
  • a small creek glistening in the sun thru the trees
  • at least 5 different kinds of butterfly
  • looking at a beetle on my hand up close, a small one and with a blue sheen. there were plenty of such flying about
  • two girls on an e-scooter passed me by on the forest road at one point, they were singing along to something. cute
  • just sitting at a tiny beachstrip of a larger lake and simply eating an apple (from the grocery store, polish import, idared cultivar, 0.11€, i liked the flavour). calm waters, mostly sunny with gorgeous clouds
  • i listened thru rogue intruder soul enhancer by oli xl like 3 times during the walk, with some breathing room around each listen for other stuff. round 12:15pm, round 3pm, round 6pm.
  • birdsong, and i think i heard common cranes at one point
• started feeling moderately overcooked yesterday, i guess partly as a result of the mild brain reset the long walk did. overcooked from how i exist online (overwhelmed, need to scale back still. left a few discord servers), and other stuff. have to be careful with what i do, otherwise it feels like burnout imminent.
• tomorrow a day off. we'll see. my parents are out of town for a couple days atm, so it's nice to be able to exist on my own for a bit, in relative peace. think i'll go to bed and try get up earlyish tomorrow to do stuff (at home i guess, would bring stuff to the reuse centre but it might be closed cos may 1st. plus check on the parents' garden). was gonna have thurs off too but some plans changed in the sched, smh. least it's light for longer in the evening at this time of year.

bought a whole 500gram thing of unsliced unflavored (merely salted) bacon today, wild level of physicality in slicing it up myself, aware that this is a chunk of a Once Living Being. meat from the side of a pig. but it feels like a more respectful form of meat in some sense, than some others i like texture-wise (some just being Undefined Blended Meatstuff really haha). hopefully this pig had a kind enough life

adjacently thinking about how some estonian company thing dedicated to checking the efficiency of animal husbandry publishes monthly statistics about the names of dairy cows, alphabetically and by frequency (for names upon 10 (registered i guess) cows or more). it's only in estonian, but the dairy cow name stats are within here. my first name is on the first page frequency-wise which is lowkey wild. but some of the names are funny. 28 dairy cows named volvo! (naturally i currently also check for oli and surely enough there's 14 as of april 1st. which i apparently also checked a year ago as per dm-s with bestie and it was 14 then too lol, 27 volvo then tho)

my parents have this semidomesticated crow that dwells at their house/gardenplot for a longer while now, whom they've named viktor. they give the crow foodstuffs pretty frequently, and the crow occasionally chases away herons and such (some of which could otherwise moderately endanger the pond fish). pretty cute, the vague symbiosis of some kind, and the having named the crow.

kind of feeling like writing down about the recent trips, so:

march 28-29 helsinki club zero nite trip highlights (non-chronological) + april 4-8 london trance party + amsterdam patrick wolf show trip highlights (also non-chrono)
-> both moved to events log

okay i think that's all for now... it's almost 10pm now, i ought to prep for bed soon.

the aforementioned trip went nicely, the workbreaktime trip went overall nicely too, i'm barely in the mood to write about anything cos i'm a bit under the weather right now from everything feeling so fucking arbitrary and life seeming so fragile sometimes and all that. it'll pass, maybe i'll write more another time, maybe about those too, or maybe not. for now feeling a bit reclusive.

the sun has peeked out from the clouds two evenings in a row so i've had sunny walks after work these past couple of days, a bit of a morale boost. heavily feel like i need to rearrange my priorities. but i did back up my 2024 pics onto my laptop the other day, tho not sorted most of them yet (just the ones from the trips into their own folders).

helsinki music event trip tomorrow, and i'm rather excited. i haven't even packed yet though, i want to pack some food with me (maybe sandwichstuffs), and i might grab either my crochet project (improvising a lil standalone hood from some kinda cool yarn. least i have foldable scissors in my wallet so there's no worry with those) or a book or two i have from the library with me so i would advance on them during the transiting there or back, if i'm not napping or enjoying the window views. need to check in online to the hostel too... maybe on the bus tomorrow, when i got both my phone and my wallet at hand.

might go for the crochet project to go, least i can sort of do that and gazing out the window a little more simultaneously than reading, though might still grab one of the books with me too, maybe one of the ones i haven't started yet. i got 3 books from the radio+telecomms section last time i was there, cos i had randomly sauntered to that section haha, 2 books on the history of estonian telecomms (one across 100 years, the other focusing on 2000-2020), and one book with selected transcribed interviews from a radio show (hosting those of interviews between parent-and-child known estonian people).

i have to clean my room and/or put some of my non-child-friendly clutter away before leaving, have halfbro ft wife and 2 kids comin by tomorrow thru saturday, the timing is really funny, 2nd time in a row this (i.e. me being away for their visit) has happened with them !! maybe i'll peruse the inside of my bed-box honestly, for the time being it could work.

my shoulder let up by yesterday evening fortunately, slightly overexerted my back though at work, but it's mostly let up too now with some rest, which is good... my cat's been sleeping on my lap for the past couple hours i think, should get up and pack and clean and go to sleep, i leave rather early tomorrow.

think i might simply add notebook updates into the changelog in post, whenever updating other shit on the site. could be an ok approach for that.

been out of it much of today, my right shoulder been giving me pain w some movements today, mustve pulled it, and i also slept badly, only fell asleep around 1am if not later, and my cat woke up my 6th sense of knowing when shes going to throw up at fucking 5am, had to quickly get her off the windowsill, ended up breaking a few of the star-shaped glass ornaments i had hanging at my window (3 of 12). though maybe the broken ones have some sort of value to them too... they all just got one corner each shattered off them. but i feel like i must've pulled my shoulder then too. had a bit of a terrible time some of today at work, and it got me on edge emotionally in the evening, that and some other shit. i only have enough energy for a notebook blurb tonight in lieu of more intricate site updates, so everything today will go here, and then i will go to sleep.

omw home from work i stopped by the stream running thru town, at a part where theres some rocks in it and a lil water cascade, over the rocks. listened for some bit. i'd been feeling on edge from the aforementioned shoulder pain, and it kind of trudging up some emotional wounds in me for some reason too. felt earlier like venting about those in here too, but not for now... but, everything felt (feels) so absurd, like, what all this bullshit for. wanted to cry, opted for shedding a few tears.

(snip)

okay that's all. good night.

i've been listening to ribbon bone by instupendo and oli xl all evening on loop (on my old mp3 player, out of inertia really. so no lastfm scrobbles from this). it's one of those evenings. mostly the silk chaser version, the one supposed to be on oli's eventual album... calculated off of my last.fm scrobbles that i've heard oli say pay attention at least 39 thousand times. yeah ive listened to the tune over 1500 times combined. but, do i fuckin pay attention. (the phrase repeats 24 times in silk chaser ver, 26 in chalk dancer, the one on instupendo's love power a-to-z album. at least if i counted correctly. im just in some flow a lot of the time when listening to oli and adjacent)

have mostly been flowing in the stupid mundaneity a lot of the time lately, haven't really felt the need to blurb about much publicly. got plans for the site tho, eventually will deal w em...!!

i've been selectively deleting a big bulk of my older tumblr posts/reblogs, after having archived the posts a couple weeks back. not solely but still largely because i've kind of just been passively wondering about how i'd wanna continue existing online. (but also did find the exact post im referring to whenever i go like historical times, and wtf do i do ... laundry, barely. because i really do still be doing laundry, barely...)

this blurb of thoughts from kinluwi tapping a lil further into some of the aspects of the wondering. so real. (also trawling thru the links the person got in the link recs page n damn i gotta read the should data expire thing in full. fuck it, maybe once ive crawled to bed n before i sleep)
relatedly, this post bout perusing social media as mere websites that i've kept around as link for a longer while now has kind of silently prodded me to currently alternate between being logged on into nothing of such sort on my phone and logging in and out of discord and instagram in particular on there... and i mean theres plenty other writing out there about this typa shit.

but it's kind of a relieving thing to sorta have stopped expecting myself to get back to people or things online immediately. helps that like all of the online friends i have, and even my semi-irl bestie and other semi-irl friends, seem to be the same way at least in relation to me for plenty reasons (busy life, limited energy, timezones, whatever). shoutout.

at this hotel and spa centre today, the outing organized by the workplace (or the higher-ups of the branch my shop's part of rly, a bunch of us from diff shops partaking), could be nice. thankfully i didnt pick any hand-specific procedures lol mine're a little bandaided up atm, but the general partial massage could b super nice, ive never gone in for one ngl (closest thing's been a breast examination once lol), my back might thank me a bit

the event was very nice. been kinda resting today but also feeling a bit down for some of it, feel so selfconscious about parts of myself / my mind sometimes and dont know how to balance it out, for now. it's all roles really i guess but i dont seem to have any reliable space for existin outside of those n just being for now (living w my parents n all). also sometimes i wanna punt around half of my online existence out the window for some reason, u feel (this is prob part related to the feeling)

got thru a 4-day workday-stretch, my legs are Sore (and tbf did also walk a bunch outside of work i guess haha)

going to tallinn tomorrow for tallinn's own sake for a change ... catching a couple nifty music events :o seeing boris (the band from japan; along w another band) live despite barely having listened to them but familiar enough to know i'd be into the gig... and then catching another thing after that that goes on til morning or something, with another vaguely-trustworthily-familiar name (estoc) in the lineup amongst some locals
though i reckoned maybe i need rest more cos i have another 4-workday stretch coming up...but at the same time Life's Too Short Not To innit, and tallinn just about close enough still for me

solidly back from the trip and unpacked by now. returned with more items of clothing than i expected hahaha, i guess that's on me for going to camden market mainly just to check out cyberdog, only ended up getting rainbow socks from there but the store had a crazy vibe. and also got a couple pairs of pants and a couple skirts from a couple other places in there, couldn't resist, the pants had such nice fabricfeel and all

pw show was nice as well even tho most of his discog dusty in my brain but he did play some of my more faves from across it so that was cool

and got to hang out w a friend (again) and had him finally fill out the friend diary thing i sometimes haul along when i want some friend or other to fill it out, was a lovely time

though i had like a couple months' worth of longdistance bus riding omw back home haha, time to enjoy the more static state for the rest of my break, gonna see what to get up to at home

currently checking out the bubble rhythm machine (extended and variations) by wouter van veldhoven from my youtube backlog, very cool

currently waiting at my flight's gate, seeing patrick wolf perform in london later today, which could be very nice. i enjoy physically transitory states sometimes. i wonder if i'll be able to catch the booked bus home on wednesday, hopefully the flight back lands in some gate nearer to the main entrance/exit...though itll be such a funny amount of bus riding, but i like em.

feel like my "consuming" (for lack of a better term) of some mediastuff feels a bit noisy right now, want to prune stuff a bit on mostly insta, want to take in art in particular a little more deliberately i feel like, and i kind of want to doodle/draw more but havin this steady noisy feedflow of art is intimidating me out of that if that makes sense haha

i guess some feeling of wanting to let my head brew all this input and concoct something out of that in peace in my own way with less of outside influence, y'know?

reading thru a thing atm

thinking about memories of warm naps, too lazy to elaborate right now.

i've taken to trying to decently back up my deviantart deviations stuff as i'm not active there anymore, used to pixel and upload a lot of emotes on there ca 2009-2011 or so... bit painstaking (fetching the pics themselves and the titles - dates - descriptions, rare screengrab of some fun comment thread or other), but i've handled everything in private storage by now so it's something... maybe i'll showcase notable things on this site someday haha

migrated the 2.1 speakers back into my room, broke the turntable back out from my closet so i could whirl some record or other if i wanted to (got my hands on this record yesterday, was such stupid joy to listen to the oli loop directly from the vinyl copy LMAO), absorbed the electric sewing machine into my room in case i want to dabble in sewing something (i do want to!! but first i'll need to figure out what and how, i do have some sorta fabrics in my closet, mostly yellow and floral), at least its manual is intact too, thank n bless.

my heart is full v1: a mix by a friend of mine which couples cartoon smile by oli xl with rly cozy tunes both before and after it, illegally lovely to the point of some tears a couple times. bought the cfcf release blanketed in snow a place returned is from during the latest bandcamp friday, after having checked the whole album out and having rly liked it. n this kind of tethered blanketed in snow to my soul somewhat, by way of having fit so well with cartoon smile in the mix, and that tune being so deeprooted in me (as yall might be aware of) :')

my heart is full v2: one of my middle-school-time teachers, the one who was the only one (edit: from every1 in middle school at the time, perhaps excluding my best friend) to remember my birthday one year when i was still in middle school, visited the shop i work at again yesterday. bought a couple catgrass seedpacks and a newspaper. she told me about how another of my middle-school-time teachers has been baking her bread on the weekly and has been so diligent with it that she's not had to buy bread from the store for a couple of years now :')

happy womens day to whoever celebrates, i feel barely a connection with that part of me but it's still kind of neat to get the occasional gift haha (the boss brought us tulips and a snack platter at work today)

been feeling nearly at my limit as of late, mentally mostly, trying to juggle that somehow, to my okayest ability. but at least the cold has mostly cleared, just a bit of a cough left...